April Edition: Generative AI, Employee Benefits, Superannuation, and Armin von Rohrscheidt

ChatGPT, Generative AI, and your Workplace

If you’re not already using AI at work, are you falling behind? Over half of respondents to our recent poll said they do not use AI in their day-to-day working life, but that doesn’t mean the day isn’t coming when #ArtificialIntelligence will be an integral part of everyone’ day.

When it does, HR and business leaders need to be ready, because AI brings more than efficiency to the workplace. It comes with ethical issues, data security concerns, potential for growing skills gaps, and a host of legal and regulatory pitfalls that could imperil the future of your business.

That being said, the opportunity is too great to ignore, and 57% of CEOs and CFOs already plan to increase use of AI and automation in their companies. So if organizations are looking to make generative AI a bigger part of their business in the future of work, it’s imperative that they adopt new guardrails as they integrate this promising technology into their workflow. 

Are your benefits still relevant for today’s challenges?

In order to support their workforce, employers must first understand their people’s lives and priorities. That’s increasingly challenging in fast-changing times, but as our new Health on Demand research reveals, it’s never been more critical.

From the pandemic to war to political and economic upheaval, employees are living through multilayered challenges, and many are looking to their employers for support. As the graph above shows, employers are wise to fill that need, with employee benefits becoming an increasingly important part of their ability to attract, retain and empower talent to thrive.

We believe that employers have an opportunity to use benefits as an expression of their company values, and in doing so they can build more competitive, resilient and sustainable organizations. To do so, we recommend employers embrace three key trends:

1. Benefits for all: Building benefit strategies that work for everyone requires insight into the broad range of needs and preferences of different employee groups in your workforce.
2. Benefits for a fast-changing world: Using #benefits as an expression of company values and to mitigate people risk is going to be more important as life becomes more complex, chaotic and digital.
3. Benefits for healthier societies: Advancing employee health is a critical component of “the S in ESG”. For employers to be part of the solution, they need to address the physical, financial and emotional needs of their workforce.

Transforming the Australian superannuation sector

Tapping into investment opportunities for their pensioners and with its widespread adoption of alternative asset classes, Australia in many ways aims to lead the rest of the world as a future-facing #investments market. As a continuation of our commitment to new innovations and solutions, we’re proud to usher in a new era with the merger of BT Super into the Mercer Super Trust. 

Through our experience Mercer - Investments in navigating uncertainty and resolve for solving the many challenges of today and tomorrow, we’re committed to deliver new scale, reach and innovation to around 850,000 superannuation members in Australia. As Michael Dempsey shares, this exciting new future allows us to continue building new investment strategies and approaches in partnership with our industry peers and investment partners, and more importantly, seek to provide best-in-class solutions to our clients that are fully focused on member outcomes.

This month we’re thrilled to shine a spotlight on Armin von Rohrscheidt , Mercer’s Global HR Transformation Leader and co-author of the new paper, "Does HR need a new operating model?”.

Armin has a wealth of experience in HR, built over a 20-year career in both consulting and HR management. He has lived and worked across Europe and the US, and prior to joining Mercer, Armin held HR leadership positions in the automotive and optics industries and as an equity Partner helped lead Promerit’s HR consultancy prior to Mercer’s acquisition of the firm in 2018. Today, Armin leads Mercer’s global HR transformation practice, helping clients to evolve their HR & people management strategies, and developed the TIM before TOM approach.

Based in Stuttgart, Germany, Armin enjoys spending time with his family and 3 kids. Away from work, he loves any kind of carpentry and woodworking, running, and is a hobby olive oil farmer in Italy with a little bit less than 160 trees.

Are you already connected with Armin? If not, check out his profile, follow and connect with him to keep up with all of Armin’s latest work and thought leadership.

And that’s all we have for this edition of Mercer News & Notes newsletter! We hope you’ll join us again next month as we continue to bring the latest insights directly to you, and please share any thoughts or recommendations on topics you’d like to see in our next issue in the comments below. 👇

Don’t forget to follow Mercer on LinkedIn for the latest insights and points of views on all things future of work, and feel free to reach out if you’d like to hear more about any of the topics discussed today!